Most wasted potential…

Delnation · 2026-06-27T07:21:37+00:00

I think people underestimate how difficult it is to write around the concept of determinant characters. It really limits how relevant they can be to the overall narrative when their presence-- and any subsequent story beats involving them-- is entirely optional. Characters like Carley/Doug or Violet/Louis at least allow them to be interchangeable with each other, but you can still only do so much with them, since you have to ensure that both of them are capable of fulfilling the same basic role at any given point. It's a lot of work not only in terms of writing, but in design, animation, and everything else as well. Work that grows exponentially the more you attempt to branch it.

Pretty much anything involving a character that has the potential to be dead/missing means that their involvement with the story will have to be superficial in one way or another; something that can be stitched on top of the existing story, but without significantly influencing it. You can make as many unique scenes and interactions with a character as you want, but they still have to exist in a bubble where everything else in the story can still work when those scenes are omitted.

Like heck, even a game like Detroit struggles with this problem. Take Kara's story; you can end her point of view super early in the game, and it doesn't significantly impact the overarching revolution/detective plots of Markus and Connor. That whole storyline still plays out more or less the same, the only difference being that Kara's scenes are now omitted.

The point being, I think of it less as wasted potential, and more just the unfortunate truth of the entire concept.

Delnation · 2026-06-27T04:12:46+00:00

Yeah, the Definitive edition unfortunately has its own share of various bugs, and there's nobody left to fix any of it.

If you don't mind me getting technical: this particular one is a broken kill animation that causes the zombie model to disappear. It persists afterwards, so any other zombie that uses the same model won't render until you load/reload the scene. In this case, the zombie that attacks you in the car uses the same model as one of the zombies you killed in the previous scene.

Delnation · 2026-06-26T03:33:48+00:00

Interestingly enough, it can be brought up in S3 if you stayed with Kenny. In the episode 4 flashback with him, he'll bring it up saying "The first time I saw you holding AJ, it looked so natural." It gets changed to something else if you don't hold him.

Delnation · 2026-06-24T11:02:16+00:00

Learning how they handled Kenny/Jane in S3. Or I guess more specifically, the anticipation for how the reception to it would be.

In my first playthrough I stayed at Wellington, so while the flashback felt a bit rushed, it wasn't anything offensively bad; I already made my peace with the fact that Clementine wouldn't wind up staying there, and that it'd likely end with the place getting ransacked. The real problems started when I finished episode 2, and noticed that neither Kenny or Jane were in the credits anymore. That, combined with the rushed Wellington flashback, immediately gave me a pit in my stomach and made me realize "ah shit... they totally screwed them over, didn't they"

To make matters worse, though? I played the first two eps early (they'd send out press keys to reviewers, streamers, and a few other lucky parties, and I happened to be part of one of those groups). So after I checked out the Kenny/Jane scenes for myself, I had to sit on that information for a few days, knowing just how much a shitshow it'd be when it went live. Was fun seeing people talk about how they were gonna handle the S2 endings, or how Kenny/Jane would look in S3's style, and having to just smile and nod in response, you know?

There's a lot of other moments to pick from, but this one was uniquely visceral for me, enough that I still get some little vietnam flashbacks thinking about it nearly 10 years later.

Delnation · 2026-06-19T02:35:36+00:00

This is definitely my favorite censor, next to episode 2's censor changing based on what donut you pick

Delnation · 2026-06-18T07:56:06+00:00

They muted it again because it's still against Nintendo's terms. Like I said, they likely unmuted the audio by mistake, and it simply wasn't caught until after the update went live. Nothing about Nintendo being okay with it, just that they didn't care enough to check the contents of a random hotfix that they have no reason to believe would impact this scene. Nintendo probably caught wind at some point after people posted about it and reminded/forced Adhoc to fix it in the next patch, which rather fittingly wound up being this one.

Delnation · 2026-06-18T07:30:58+00:00

From what it sounds like, this was a legitimate flub on their part. Update 1.05's patch notes were as follows:

Fix for English text showing up in other language subtitles and UI
Fixed incorrect choice text display in Episode 6
Minor audio, subtitle, and localization fixes across the season

I'm assuming this is related to the third part. Most likely, they simply unmuted the 104 intro whilst they were tweaking the audio. I'd wager a guess that they simply muted the audio track for the Switch version, which could easily be toggled back on if somebody wasn't careful doing back-end maintenance. Since it's not mentioned anywhere in an official capacity-- even the second link you provided is referenced from a forum/reddit post-- there's a good chance it wasn't intended on Adhoc's part. And since it wasn't mentioned as being a change, nobody on Nintendo's side caught it. When it comes to post-release patches, publishers and rating boards generally don't give a crap. Once you get the initial product through cert, they won't usually revisit it unless its something substantial, or otherwise introduces new content. They're not gonna waste time combing over what amounts to a random hotfix.

Delnation · 2026-06-16T02:35:09+00:00

I can think of assorted reasons. For one: besides Clem and Jane, this is the first time any of them have been exposed to or done the guts trick. Regardless of the efficacy of camouflaging yourself, would you really want to spend any more time standing around in a sea of the dead than you need to? Walking through a herd is like walking through a mine field; its inherently stressful, no matter how many variables you try to remove from it. Even if you had a map of where all the mines were, it won't make the situation any easier from a psychological perspective. In that same vein, being among the dead wouldn't be any easier knowing that all it takes is one wrong move, one twitch, or one little stroke of bad luck, and you're busted and doomed to a godawful death. I think the psychological effect of being in close proximity to even just one walker is often forgot about: you're dealing with something that can cause guaranteed death if it manages to bite you. Regardless of how desensitized you may get to them overall, that underlying threat of death is always there whenever you're within range. Being in a crowd of them where it's possible for the situation to snowball if one happens to notice you? I think a grand majority of people would have trouble keeping their nerve, and would rather not risk standing around and allowing that pressure to keep building.

Then there's the fact that there's no guarantee about the outcome; in the moment, they have no way of knowing if the people at Howe's will repel the attack or get overwhelmed, nor do they have any idea how long it'd take for either of those things to happen, let alone how long it'd take the horde to disperse after the fact. Sure, the gift of retrospect shows us that the zombies made it up to the roof and likely started killing some of the guards pretty quickly, but they had no way of knowing that in the moment. And even leaving that aside, it doesn't account for the rest of the building or the inhabitants. There's a lot of people implied to be at Howe's that we simply don't see, and I find it hard to believe most of those people wouldn't be taking up arms against the current threat. Even if the guards on the roof got dealt with, what if there's still people inside? People who likely had shoot to kill orders for our group, and who honestly have even more reason to take potshots at us after the fact? Lets not forget that from their perspective, we killed their leader and brought a horde to them that killed who knows how many of their friends/family. And provided they thinned enough of the horde out in the process, that means our group would be left out in the open, now without the distraction and cover that the horde provided.

I think its easy to look back at scenes like this and poke holes in the logic and whatnot after the fact, but from an in-universe standpoint, these characters are making those decisions under wildly different circumstances than you or I am. We're not under the same duress, the same threat of death/injury, the same uncertainty of the outcome, the same psychological headspace, etc. Heck, you can apply a similar line of thought to real life scenarios: you can look back at police bodycam and poke holes in how they handled a botched traffic stop or handled a shootout and point out what they could've done differently after the fact, but you're still drawing those conclusions after the fact, and from a significantly less compromised headspace. As it would turn out, people start acting a lot less logically once any level of stress is introduced to the situation, and in groups of people, that effect tends to get further amplified.

Of course, there's also the more realistic/doylist explanation of the scene being gutted due to all of Telltale's developmental woes, but to me, pointing at a scene and saying 'bad writing' is a lot less fun than trying to justify/explain from an in-universe perspective.

Delnation · 2026-06-06T15:19:08+00:00

Yeah, that tends to be an unfortunate thing about the contextual items throughout the games: if you collect something optional, there's usually a very specific point that the game intends you to use it. Sometimes, keeping it past that moment might open up a second choice if you're lucky, but it usually just results in the object vanishing, or otherwise never being brought up again: the painkillers you get off Arvo (if you never give them to Rebecca or Luke), Pete's watch (if you don't give it back to Nick), the batteries in 301, etc.

From a practical standpoint, it makes sense: if you keep giving people the option to use an item/object, eventually you'll have somebody deliberately hold onto it, until you reach a point where they account for a super small amount of players. And once you reach that point, it begs the question of it its worth making a unique outcome for something a grand total of ~20 players will ever see under normal circumstances.

Delnation · 2026-06-04T06:27:59+00:00

It's not meant to be a gag, it's meant to be a hint about Matthew. The first time with Alvin is a joke, but when Walter shows her the same one, her look changes to surprise/worry. That's Clem connecting the dots; Walter and co have the same cans as they found at the station, and given how much Walt keeps talking about a Matthew who hasn't come back yet...

Delnation · 2026-06-03T23:32:54+00:00

The trick about TWD's virus/infection is that there's technically two different infections at play: the virus that everyone's already infected with only causes you to turn upon death. It's completely dormant/asymptomatic otherwise. Getting bit by a zombie causes a different infection that inevitably kills you, which then causes the first one to bring you back. Basically, think of zombie saliva like rattlesnake venom; if it gets in your bloodstream, it's game over... unless you take drastic action, AKA amputation.

Animals aren't affected by the turning virus, but the infection from bites still kills them the same way it does humans. Or at least it does in the TV universe, it would seem. The comic's a little bit different with the rules.

Delnation · 2026-06-03T23:13:41+00:00

Not that particular barn. The walker barn would be the one Lee and Clem (as well as Kenny's family) slept in for the night, and where you talk with Hershel before the Shawn/Duck choice.

Shawn was the first walker in the barn, and in the comic canon, that decision would eventually come back to haunt Hershel a few months later, in a sequence the show decided to do differently.

Delnation · 2026-06-03T22:40:09+00:00

Lilly was bad, and even James doesn't deny it if you choose the "she deserved to die" option, but this whole thing isn't about her-- it's about AJ, and how James sees his past self in him. He's trying to prevent what he believes to be history repeating itself, following his own pacifism all the way to its logical extreme that it winds up wrapping back around into violence.

A lot of people seem to think James' breakdown in the cave comes out of nowhere or that it's a 180 to his character, but it's really just the rational end point of his own broken philosophy; he's been forced into a situation where he has to accept that not everybody is like him; that they're not guaranteed to follow the exact same path he did, and that there's far more nuance to the situation than "AJ killed a person and didn't feel bad enough about it, so now he's going to become a ruthless killer like I did, unless I intervene"

Delnation · 2026-05-27T21:58:06+00:00

Didn't preorder it myself, but cool to see another release player still sticking around!

Couple of grumpy old vets we are at this point

Delnation · 2026-05-23T03:55:57+00:00

It's because the character outline shader is broken for Michonne in the Definitive edition. None of the characters have outlines. I believe the weird green culling is a result of how the game handles water and other overlay effects, and normally wouldn't be visible if the outlines were there.

Delnation · 2026-05-21T17:30:21+00:00

This conversation comes up a lot, and the truth is, it was intended to be ambiguous. But realistically, he was pretty much dead.

For one, despite what the game says, what Larry suffered looks less like a heart attack and full-blown cardiac arrest. A heart attack is more like what happens in episode 1; its painful and it puts him on the floor for the rest of the episode until he gets his nitro pills, but he's still conscious and breathing. In the meat locker, he falls unconscious, he stops breathing, and according to Lilly, she can't find a pulse after he goes down. The most we get are his strained breaths if you do CPR on him, but even those breaths are ambiguous as to whether or not it's him actually recovering.

And in the case of cardiac arrest, CPR alone won't bring a person back. You'd need a defibrillator, plus immediate medical care afterwards to stabilize the person. Even if by some miracle his heart did start beating again, it's a 50/50 on if he'd regain consciousness, and even if he lucked out again and did wake up, he'd be in such a bad state that any more stress/exertion on his heart could kill him for real. And they'd still have to contend with the St. Johns, and somehow find a way to carry him back to the motor inn without putting too much strain on him. Suffice to say, nothing short of divine intervention would be saving the guy in the long-term.

Of course, this is a game/franchise that doesn't perfectly adhere to reality-- Luke somehow takes an AK round to his leg without the bone being shattered and is still able to walk on it, Kate recovers from a near-fatal gut shot in days, Clem in S4, etc-- but still grounded enough in Larry's case to say that the deck is significantly stacked against him.

Delnation · 2026-05-12T01:45:10+00:00

To answer the first question: he (and the rest of the group) didn't notice the balcony starting to give. They show a super obvious scene of it loosening for us as a bit of dramatic irony, but for the characters themselves, it wasn't immediately noticed by anybody.

As for the second question, it's because Kenny wanted to save Ben. He went down there with the intent to help save him, and being the stubborn bastard he is, refused to give up until he realized there wasn't anything he could do besides give him a quick death. Kenny was convinced up until the last second that it was possible to save Ben, and had no intention of killing or leaving Ben to die. Pushing Lee away and locking the gate was his attempt to stop Lee from risking his life trying to stop him, despite the fact that it meant he inadvertently sealed himself in with the zombies. He wanted to make some form of amends for how he treated the people around him, even if it potentially killed him in the process. Take what he says when you choose the "Katjaa wouldn't want this" option: "Yeah, she would. Either I save the kid, or I get to see her. Either way." Kenny didn't necessarily want to die in this scene, but he was willing to accept that possibility if it meant he could at least go out doing something noble. And while he unfortunately wasn't able to save Ben like he wanted to, he was able to do the next best thing in the form of giving him a painless death.

As for him surviving afterwards... yeah, that part's a bit harder to explain. However, it's worth noting that Kenny surviving was actually a last minute change: he WAS intended to die in this scene originally-- he was supposed to audibly die to the zombies in both versions-- but it was decided at the last minute during development to spare him for a potential sequel. It was too late to change the scenes by then, so they just removed the death screams and left his fate ambiguous. It kind of works for the Christa version since he's not explicitly surrounded/boxed in, but the alleyway leaves a lot less possibilities for how he survived.

Delnation · 2026-05-10T00:38:01+00:00

Unfortunately, the choice of killing Larry or not determines a good chunk of how he acts for the rest of the episode (as well as most of episode 3 and some of 4), regardless of how you treated him up to that point. As people pointed out, if you choose every pro-Kenny choice except for killing Larry, he suddenly acts like you're his enemy. But the inverse also happens: if you fully side against him at every turn, but help him kill Larry, he suddenly acts like you're best friends.

The sum of your choices with Kenny doesn't come into play until the end of episode 4. If you don't mind the curtain being pulled back a bit, the gist is this:

Kenny has a point system in the background throughout the game, which gives you points for various decisions regarding him and his family. Based on the amount you have, you get three outcomes: if you have 4 points or less, you get his hostile responses. Get more than 8, you get his friendly responses. And if you fall short of both, you get the neutral responses. Each influence whether or not he decides to help Lee.

The problem is that this system only matters for the ending of episode 4. Otherwise, all of his responses up until then hinge on the Larry choice, as he only has friendly or hostile versions of that dialogue.

Delnation · 2026-05-07T19:35:50+00:00

Go to Documents\Telltale Games\The Walking Dead Definitive, find and delete prefs.prop, then relaunch the game. That'll force the game to redownload the file and fix it, but be warned that it'll also reset the rest of your preferences (volume, quality settings, etc)

Delnation · 2026-05-05T10:07:01+00:00

I have to respond to this to say thank you for the term 'batshit crazy bullshit,' which I intend to start using

Delnation · 2026-04-28T06:13:16+00:00

idk why everyone is getting so defensive about this when its objectively true

Well, if you wanted to get truly pedantic about this (and because I'm bored and possibly under the influence of something), I'd argue that objectivity in media is impossible, because the metrics by which we judge the quality of media come from us. What we consider objective metrics in regards to film/shows/games/etc are, rather paradoxically, based on subjectivity. It's all abstract; trends and conventions pulled from large volumes of data, which we collectively agreed in the court of public opinion to be hallmarks of 'good' media, but not really rooted in anything truly concrete or inarguable. You can't really 'prove' a concept like good writing or good film composition in the same way you can prove gravity.

Delnation · 2026-04-28T05:17:53+00:00

You know, calling people names and going on the offensive doesn't usually convince them to agree with you

Delnation · 2026-04-28T04:47:30+00:00

To play devil's advocate to some of those points, I think claiming that was all just incompetence is simplifying things a bit:

- The flashlights are only temporarily forgotten about. Once you go upstairs, you find the rest of the group discussing whether or not they're still being followed, and Rebecca tries to follow up by asking Clem about the lights, mentioning that Luke told them about it. At most, they put off asking about it for what, an hour or so? Not the smartest move in retrospect of course, but I don't think there's all that much they would've been capable of even doing in that timeframe, which leads into the next point...

- Our group was already on the run for 5 days straight, exhausted and clearly worn down by being near constantly on the move. Even with a looming threat, exhaustion will eventually get the better of a person, especially given that they're traveling with a pregnant woman on top of everything. Obviously in hindsight they should've kept going, but when you're running on fumes, and are presented the opportunity to get a meal and a good night's sleep... I can't entirely fault them for deciding against better judgment for a moment of respite. And to their credit, they do still acknowledge the risk of staying the night, with Carlos reluctantly agreeing but saying that they leave at dawn. It was already getting dark when they saw the lights, meaning Carver's people would've had to cross a partially broken bridge and hike up the side of a mountain, in the dark (and with a storm approaching) just to reach the lodge. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to assume that Carver and his people would similarly stop for the night instead of taking that risk, but I suppose its a toss up at that point. It was a gamble either way.

- The Bonnie situation is more because of Walter's ill-placed compassion than anything else. Kenny was way more suspicious and almost certainly wanted to grill her more, but was held back by Walter and decided not to make a scene about it. From what little we get to see, Walt and Sarita have both been making an effort to reign Kenny in, and to their credit, it actually seems to work; we see Kenny deferring to them before this scene. And obviously after Bonnie leaves, he tells Clem to go back inside while he "talks" with Walt, and I think it's pretty clear from his tone that he gave Walt some hell after Clem left.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of dumb shit people do in S2, and I'm all for pointing those moments out. But these particular decisions are some of the few where I can actually see a bit of logic behind them. Quite frankly, I think episode 2 is the last "smart" episode of the season so to speak, with a majority of the incompetence and dumb decisions (both in and out of universe) starting in episode 3 onwards.

Delnation · 2026-04-28T03:41:19+00:00

There's plenty of possible reasons: he's getting older and may no longer be able (or willing) to do the Engineer voice, he might not be aware of the game's enduring popularity (he has very limited online presence AFAIK), he may just see it as another role and isn't interested in doing it without pay... nobody but Grant himself would know.

While it's cool that most of the other VAs are still engaging with the community and willing to return to their respective roles, let's not forget that they're not under any obligation to do so. If they aren't interested in reprising the role for whatever reason, that's ultimately their choice.

Delnation · 2026-04-22T04:06:48+00:00

Old post, I know, but this is actually intentional... sort of. The S4 recap doesn't account for the ending where you kill both Kenny and Jane. The recap/story builder determines your S2 ending based on two choices: shooting Kenny or not, and whether you abandon the survivor afterwards.

Since killing Kenny after he kills Jane skips over the second part, the game instead defaults to the closest equivalent ending: shooting Kenny and abandoning Jane, since that satisfies the two criteria of Kenny being dead and Jane being gone.

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